Gaming leads the way in equality

IN 1998, there was a quiet first for video games. In a run-down, post-apocalyptic church, under a nuclear sky, two characters of the same sex were married by a part-time preacher. It was a fleeting ceremony in dusty digital Arizona, but things would never be the same for games again. 

Fallout 2 was rightly praised for its sharp wit and biting satirical depiction of a radioactive America, but it was also a game about choice. You could choose to be an idiot savant, a physical powerhouse, a mechanics genius, a charismatic speaker, or just an all-round Joe.

You could also choose to be gay. If you decided to play as a female, your character could later sleep with and marry a girl called Miria, in that run-down church under a burnt orange sky. “Do you take this woman as your lawfully wedded, uhm, other?” the preacher asks, with typical Fallout tongue-in-cheek.